TGS 2008: Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology 2 Hands-on

Share.

It's like a Tales party.

By Ryan Clements

There are an impressive number of PSP games here at this year's TGS and one of the games being shown off at Sony's booth is Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology 2. Based in the Tales franchise and gathering characters and locales from throughout the series, Radiant Mythology 2 is sure to appeal to fans of the long-standing RPG line. I took a few minutes to play around with Radiant Mythology 2 and see what it's bringing to the table.

The beginning of the demo (which is, may I remind you, all in Japanese) displayed a character creation screen of sorts, but I passed over this and moved right into the heart of the action. The game started off with a panel of three character portraits chatting about something or another, until I was given control of my party and let loose in a random dungeon.

The dungeon was set to a charming, lilting piece of music and ghostly lights flooded the blue walls while water flowed along the corridor edges. Before jumping into a battle, I surveyed my team and poked around in the menu for a bit, but -- as you might expect -- nothing really came of it. So I ran headfirst into a giant enemy crab.

Well, they weren't "giant" so much as "menacing," but the crabs were some of the first and only enemies I came across in the dungeon. Battles played out like other Tales games, with a 3D field you can move around freely. The Circle button is used for attacking and you can chain a variety of techniques together to keep your opponents on the defensive. On the other hand, the Square button is the designated blocking button and the D-pad can be used to modify your attacks.

Unfortunately, it's always difficult to write about an RPG with such little time to invest in the experience. From what I saw, the game looks like a fine PSP title that has an intriguing (albeit familiar) combat system and recognizable characters. We'll just have to see how the game plays out sometime in the future.